Document Templates

You use report templates to generate reports on your model that present specific information in a particular format, and to generate those reports repeatedly and consistently. You can select from a range of system templates on the Document Generator, to immediately generate reports from your model.

A template consists of:

'Sections' that identify the model components to report on

Fields that identify the type of information to extract on each component

Styles and formatting instructions that define the layout of the report

Template Fragments containing smaller sub-templates

The system provides more specialized document templates for separate Cover Pages, Stylesheets and Tables of Contents.

You can also design your own custom templates, which provide the additional advantages of being able to generate reports tailored to your own organization, and to update certain aspects of the report without having to re-define every other specification. The report generator helps you manage these custom templates; that is:

To create a new custom template, click on this button. The 'New Document Template' dialog displays.

In the 'New template' field, type the template name.

In the 'Template Type' field, click on the drop-down arrow and select the type of template to create.

In the 'Copy Template' field, click on the drop down arrow and select either:

'None', to create an empty template to develop from scratch, or

The name of an existing system, Technology or custom template to act as a base; this list is filtered to show templates of the type you specified in the 'Template Type' field

In the 'Template Group' field either:

Select an existing group or

Enter the name for a new template group, or

Leave this field blank, to place the template in the appropriate standard type group

The 'Template Group' determines the organization of document templates in the Resources window. You cannot create a template of a specific type and assign it to the standard group of a different type. For example, you cannot specify a Fragment and select to save it in the Cover Page folder. It either goes to a user-created group that you select or is automatically redirected to the Fragment folder.

Click on the OK button; the template opens in the 'Document Template Designer'.

To delete a custom template, click on the template name and click on the Delete button.

A prompt displays to confirm the deletion.

You can select multiple custom templates for deletion; press Ctrl or Shift as you click on each template name.

Notes

In the Corporate, Business and Software Engineering, System Engineering and Ultimate editions of Enterprise Architect, if security is switched on, you need 'Configure Resources' access permission to create document templates

Whatever template you initially select on the 'Template' tab or 'New Document Template' dialog, of whichever template type and/or group, you can easily switch to a different template and template type within the 'Document Template Editor' whenever you need to